A Letter to the Fallen Goddesses

(Women who used to dance and paint but accidentally became afraid)

There was a time you ran and roared and threw your face to the sun. You were the painter. You were big and you were all body, barely any head at all. You were hungry and you ate and ate, you cried out and kicked the covers off your feet in the night. You danced through the backyard, you, the feral artist.

When did you decide to be small?

Kindness glides on like paint. Smooth, and easy. It rests on the surface of you like a watercolor. It doesn’t always know which crevice to slip into, it’s not inclined to sink its teeth. It hasn’t been taught where to go or how to rest. So it glides off like paint, too. You, the stone. The freshly formed ice. It grows over you like moss. It drips off of you. It wants to stay. 

Hate gets etched in like wire in bone. It is the seething drip, a puncture. The sharp point dipping into the ink in the bottle, the spill, the wreckage, the untamable fear. And it knows where to go, and where to seep, and how to rest there. It has built itself upon knowing these things. It is a hunter, and it scours the paths that take it right to the center of you. It will do anything to stay. 

This path to the center, the one the hate takes, was carved out by you, somehow, sometime. It was not them who etched it through, not really, not truly, because they were the messengers, and you were the architect. You were told something, and you believed it. And wasn’t it was plausible they were right? So it winds through you, without words. With words. In a look. You are bad, and that pathway was carved. You weren’t supposed to do that, and another was carved, you weren’t supposed to think that, and another. You weren’t supposed to look that way, or be that way. It goes on like this.

And like a branch extending into a network of roads, more avenues form like scars, like fossils, you’re not good. If only you were. You don’t even need them to tell you anymore, you can take up their post. You’re not enough, and your face is crooked. You can’t do that, so why did you? Why did you say that? Look how they look. Look what you’ve done. 

And like an obedient worker, you picked up a shovel and dug a riverbed in your skin. For years, you have cut and carved a winding and complex map to the center of who you now believe you are. And when the hate arrives it pours into that riverbed like honey. It didn’t make the path, it had nothing to do with that, but it knows how to take it. It flows downstream with such ease. It knows where to go to stay safe, and warm. It is afraid. It takes comfort in patterns and belief. It knows how to survive, and it knows where to hide to escape excavations. Yes, the path was already made, the hate just traveled it.

---

And isn’t it so easy to hate the hate? To want it gone, to try to force it out of you? And when the kindness slips off the surface, you try to grasp at it and hold it, like a writhing fish in the water. Like making out the details of a fresh painting that has been left in the rain. 

You used to be the painter. When did you decide to be so small?

---

So you let go, you surrender to all of it, to everything. You sink into the mess and noise, you submerge yourself in it entirely, you let the dark honey meet the watercolored compliments, they shake hands, they become the same hand. This is you, as you are, now. And that’s when you remember The Love. You have been sitting inside it this whole time, it hung around you like a smoke that never really drifts. It wove its way through you, like a great cosmic stitch, and it always has. It rests there, dormant and silent, because love does not demand your praise or attention. It won’t remind you to be seen, it won’t leave its mark on your skin. The Love lies in wait, The Love rests in the cavities and crevices, within the honey, underneath the riverbed, inside the skin, sprinkled throughout it, deep in the center, below, below. The Love does not wish for you to carve a new path, or hold the good ones, or any path at all. The Love welcomes each one with unwavering understanding. The Love is the shelter - a bath you sink into, a sponge that soaks up the chaos.

It doesn’t scrape or claw or grasp, it gently makes home to a cleanliness that cannot be faked. It uses the hate that you tried so hard to extract, it performs a patient alchemy, a rewrite without an eraser. It calls the marks useful, accepted, gently misunderstood. It says, ‘I see this mark, I see this scar, and I love this scar because it is a piece of My Love.’ It says, ‘I am the same, I am the scar, and we are marvelous because of it.’ The Love allows the marks to exist as a piece of the tapestry and calls it art. 

There is perfection in its work. The shape, the shape that is you, the pattern that is you. The sliding kindness. The darkness you took in. Your ability to change it with your gaze, to look at what enters the center and say, ‘I see what you have taught me.’ The paths you wanted to build, even if you did not know you wanted to build them. The places where they caught you off guard, where these things snuck in that can no longer sneak through you. And yes, how wonderful to know - to know who you are. Know where you are penetrable and where you are not. The Lesson; that you are the designer of your landscape, your kingdom. The ancient guardian that remembers to allow The Love to rise. Not to cover the scars, but to submerge them. To ornament them. The marks, the black and the pain, the watercolor, the artwork that is you. 

You, you big thing, you Goddess of Paint and Ink, the keeper of stains and colors. It is all of you, and you are love, and it is the material with which you use to craft your story.

 ‘Would you like to be the painter?’ The Love asks. 

‘Would you like to be the painter?’